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Monday, December 27, 2010

After the Devils’ hard-skating, fast-paced practice today, none of the players came off the ice initially. The main part of practice had lasted approximately one hour and 10 minutes. Then, the players remained on the ice to do some more drills and shooting on the goaltenders for another 20 minutes.

Martin Brodeur was at one end of the rink and was having a tough time as the players came out of the corner one at a time and fired shots on him. A few more were going in than Brodeur liked and his frustration seemed to build with each one.

Then, Patrik Elias came out of the right corner with the puck, cut in front and beat Brodeur with a shot that went under this blocker. That was final straw for Brodeur, who turned and slammed his stick multiple times against the crossbar and the right post leaving it shattered in pieces.

Brodeur then skated calmly to the bench to retrieve another stick and resumed the drill.

"I was just venting a little bit," he explained afterward.

Brodeur downplayed the incident, but it is clear he is frustrated with how he is playing. He was pulled after two periods in Sunday's 4-1 loss to Toronto, in which he gave up three goals on 14 shots. That came after he gave up five goals on 14 shots in a 5-1 loss to the Islanders on Thursday.

Brodeur has given up at least three goals in seven of the eight starts he has made since returning from a right elbow bruise. The only game he won in those eight starts was a 3-0 victory over Phoenix on Dec. 15.

He wasn't thrilled about being pulled Sunday, but knows the only way to get through it is to work.

"It's hard," he said. "It's the hardest thing that you have to go through. You play hockey to have fun. Ultimately, everyone knows it's our job. That's we're making a living with. But I think you want to have fun doing it and right now it's not a fun atmosphere to come in and get beat every night and not doing well. You just try to work through it."

Brodeur said practices like today's can help him do that.

“For goalies, it’s repetition," he said. "I get 14 shots (in a game) and there’s only so many ways you get shots. So, in practice if you do repetition, it becomes second nature and you start reading the players better. You have to do it over and over and over. It’s like a guy that can’t score. In practice, he has to get that shot so that when he gets in a game it’s natural.

“I think that’s where we are at right now. We have to work on our skills to get comfortable again when you’re faced with situations.”

After Brodeur shattered his stick, Elias skated over to him and tried to encourage him. Elias saw Brodeur's eruption as a positive.

"It's good, emotions," Elias said. "It's healthy."

Both Brodeur and Elias said Brodeur has done that before, but I can't recall him doing it very often. Elias pointed out that Brodeur is not the only one trying to regain his confidence right now either.

"It's all of us," he said. "It's good to show your emotions. He's working on whatever he feels he has to work on and it's every one of us. I don't mind seeing that at all. We all get frustrated. Everyone does it in their own way. We want to work hard out there. We want to do the right things so that it shows in the game and those things just show you that we're in a tough situation and nobody is happy with it."

***Today's practice was probably the longest of the season. The players didn't seem to mind, though. With five consecutive losses and 10 in their last 11 games, they know they have a lot to work on. And this was their first full practice since Jacques Lemaire took over as head coach on Thursday.

Lemaire, 65, pushed the tempo and stopped drills to explain things -- and yell at the players at least once.

“It was good,” Brodeur said. “He explained a lot of things where we have some difficulties. Even though it as a high-paced practice, he took the time to explain a lot of the reasons why we’re doing the drills, not just doing the drill. He was adamant about it. He’s got that excitement for coaching back it looks like. He had it all last year, but it’s a lot different for us right now, especially the situation we’re in. We’re really kind of going through a little zone and the details more than the overall game.”

“It was a good practice,” Elias said. “You’re involved. There’s not too much of a break in between the drills and it’s high-paced. You get a lot of conditioning during those drills because they’re a little bit longer and you’re battling, but it’s fun.”

Lemaire stopped practice at one point to yell at the defensemen for wasting time with the puck before moving it up to the forwards. He wants the puck moved up quickly and for the defensemen to follow behiind the forwards after they pass it to them.

"That's what we've been taking about," Lemaire said. "You know all of these little things, they happen more when your team is not confident, it's not winning. They happen more and it's normal. But even if your team is good, it still happens. Not as much, but it happens because it's a game of mistakes. When your mind is not sharp, you're not sharp, you're not totally in the best shape possible, you will make more mistakes,"

Lemaire mentioned after Sunday's loss that the players looked like they were tired and needed to work on their conditioning. So, there was a lot of skating today both during drills with the puck and then some laps without the puck at the end of the structured part of the practice.

I asked Lemaire how a team could be out of shape 35 games into the season.

"It's not only practices because you can get in shape with practices," Lemaire replied. "The thing is you stop pushing. As a player in practice you have to push til it hurts and if you don't do that, you're not in the best shape possible. It's got to hurt. So, before it hurts, you stop pushing, what does it do? You get out of shape,"

He said that ultimately falls on the players -- not the coach.

"I know we are responsible to a certain point, but I had guys that I've coached and do the same drills for all of the guys and you get 80 percent that are in top shape and 20 percent that they're not in shape," Lemaire said. "You know why? You've got to look at them and push them all the time otherwise they don't do it. There's a time it's up to the player to do it. It's not the coach.

"I'm sure you guys saw Johnny Mac's practices. I'm sure his practices were fine. That's not the point. But me I see they have no endurance. They don't sustain the pressure that I want them to have on the other team, so that tells me they're not in shape. They're in shape, but not in good shape."

Elias doesn't believe conditioning has been a problem for him (Lemaire did single him out Sunday as one player who has been playing well), but said he could understand how some players lost some conditioning.

“I feel fine myself. I feel good out there physically," Elias said. "But sometimes especially when you get in a slump, you try to work on a lot of things in practice and you try to explain a lot of things and you lose that momentum maybe sometimes. You lose that pace. We were there an hour and a half (today). The last half hour we were just shooting (around). But it was a high-paced hour and we still got a lot of things done. And when you do that, it makes it easier in the game a little bit.”

***Lemaire said he hadn't decided yet if Vladimir Zharkov will play Wednesday against the Rangers after being called up today.

"Maybe," Lemaire said. "We'll see what he does. We'll see how he developed, see if he improved. I can't tell you we'll try to get some goals because he hasn''t scored a lot, but you never know. He's old enough now that there could be a time that he'll come in and start to do something that we'll like."

Zharkov, 22, had 10 assists, but no goals in 40 NHL games with the Devils last season. He had seven goals and 11 assists in 29 AHL games with the Albany Devils this season.

Zharkov said he played "not bad" with Albany this season, "But I think I can play a little bit better, probably work on my defense because the last maybe five games I was minus (he is minus-4 for the season). But maybe a little better offensively too because I need a lot of points. Eighteen is not good for me. I think (I need) even more."

This is the first time Zharkov has been called up this season. He said he was told he was being called up after Albany's game at Wilkes Barre-Scranton Sunday night. He drove from Albany to Newark this morning and arrived at Prudential Center about noon. He said he had "no problems" with the roads after Sunday's snow storm.

"Maybe I play next game," he said. "We'll see tomorrow in practice and warm-up the next day."

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.